


shall i?

by bokutoma



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Everyone Is Alive, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Heavy Angst, POV Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James Lives, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives) Lives, but also some people died, i'm a fucking maverick babey!!!!, still i promise not to fuck with you too hard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:21:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23824510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bokutoma/pseuds/bokutoma
Summary: danny hadn't needed skin to sing, so what happened to it? sasha's body was never found, so where does it go?people change, but is it the insides that count? or can it be the outsides, too?
Relationships: Danny Stoker & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims, Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Comments: 1
Kudos: 23





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i would apologize except i have no morals and this is plaguing me deeply
> 
> thanks to ludo for encouraging me

What had Sasha James been to Timothy Stoker but everything?

If this was an exaggeration, then it was only slight. She had known about Danny because he had _told_ her, not because it had been coaxed out of him or known by an eldritch boss (And really, wasn't that just his luck? Bosses were bad enough as it was, especially when they looked and talked like smarmy Elias Bouchard.). She had kept some vital part of him alive with her snarky commentary and unapologetic competence. He would find the _thing_ that had taken his brother, of course, but he had no longer been alone in that impossible quest, and in the meantime, there she had been, ready with consolation or a joke depending on what he needed.

He had tried to make himself valuable in turn, of course, striking that balance between friendly shoulder and the righteous rage that seemed to come a little more naturally to him these days. For once, this came naturally to him, no studying of preferences or analysis needed. Sasha had liked him the way he was, sharp edges he occasionally forgot to smooth out, fumbled words, and all.

It wasn't that such an occurrence never happened, but that when it came to Sasha, it had mattered a lot more. She had been an anchor, tethering him to his place against the current, preventing him from drifting too far away. If that wasn't healthy, well... Lots of things about Tim hadn't been healthy, but he had dealt with them pretty well, all things considered.

Then she had been replaced. Sasha was gone, and he had never even known.

Maybe that had been when everything began to unravel, but really, he'd probably been fraying apart for years and hadn't noticed.

That seemed about right for his luck.

* * *

What had Danny been to Tim but everything?

Danny, whose scrapes Tim had kissed when their mother hadn't been around to do it. Danny, whose charm had gotten them out of trouble more times than not, and when it hadn't, Tim had been there with a joke or with defiance.

Danny, who had been perfect in more ways than not, and Tim had never been able to do anything but love him for it.

Wasn't that strange, that after all this time, the ways that Tim remembered his brother best were as the kid he had once been, and not the grinning visage that he had seen from posters, from atop a sailboat, from the finish line of a race?

Maybe that Danny held too many bad memories now.

In his worst moments, Tim hates Abigail Ellison. Maybe if she had never mentioned anything about urban exploration, if she had just kept her mouth shut and stuck to whatever else it was you talked about with old childhood friends, Danny would still be alive.

Mostly, though, he just hates himself.

Those pictures had just been like any other, the ones Danny had sent of his grinning face in front of some rusted monument to humanity or another. He'd had his group of friends, the ones who loved him at least half as much as Tim did, and for some reason, there had been comfort in that. As though Danny hadn't always ventured out on his own sooner or later.

Ghost buildings. What an innocuous name for the phenomenon that had ripped Danny away. Not that Tim would know if they actually had a different name; he'd scraped any mention of urban exploration from his memory and Google searches as swiftly as was humanly possible.

"Don't worry," Danny had said with that infectious grin upon hearing Tim's protests about his venturing into the abandoned levels of the former Theatre Royal in Covent Garden. "I'll be going alone. I won't attract much attention that way."

What had he said in response? Had he cracked some joke about how Danny couldn't help drawing looks wherever he went? Outright said that it was a bad idea?

In the end, it was never going to matter what he said; when Danny had an idea, he followed through on it regardless of what the consequences might have been. Not that either of them could have predicted this, of course, but maybe a part of him had always known how this was going to end.

"The show must go on," Danny had said, tears streaking down his face even as Tim had tucked spare blankets around him, and go on it had.

What hope had Tim ever had but to play his part in the act of a lifetime?

He would never forget that first sight of Joseph Grimaldi, contorting its body in impossible ways, writhing as though there had been something living, hungry under that hideous, colorful costume. It had been more than enough to distract from the grim, crumpled figure of Danny, such as it was. The way the blackwhite blood had streaked behind it as it lunged for the stage with excruciating, dramatic movements, the way the music had swelled in time with the near comical arch of an arm or leg pinwheeling forward, heedless of the way the motion dragged the body behind it and caused grinning red abrasions to mar the skin - all of it had been so grotesque, so awful to behold, but Tim could no sooner expunge the sight from his mind than he could forget about his brother.

That clown, that damnable Joseph Grimaldi, had dripped and leaked blood and black pus (For what else could that have been, oozing down from its hair? _Paint_ would have been naive at best and delusional at worst.) as it had stood beside the Danny that wasn't, and the evil that resided in its manic, too wide smile would have given any horror storyteller more than enough nightmares for a lifetime.

"Shall I?" it had asked, and there had been nothing in that tone that could not have played at being human even if it had wanted to.

And it had.


	2. Chapter 2

The first sign Tim has that there is something afoot is in the twist of a woman's mouth when Jon is taking her statement.

Not that he ever really tries to pay attention to what Jon is doing (or even do anything that resembles actual work) these days, but there are some things that even he, skilled as he has gotten at ignoring that which he longs not to see, can't tune out forever. As it so happens, first and foremost among these is the weird voice Jon puts on when he's either reading or taking a statement.

He shouldn't have even seen it, really; normally, Jon either does them in his office or in a little room re-purposed (or re-re-purposed, perhaps) just for that. This woman, however, had gotten one look at Tim and decided she was going to spill her guts in front of him or not at all.

Honestly, he would have been perfectly fine with the latter, except that once she had assured Jon she wanted him to take the statement, and this was more of a comfort thing, he had been little support save for a shrug and an eye roll.

What had he expected, though?

In the end, he had acquiesced, and in the same twisted way he's grateful for anything even tangentially related to those he's lost, he's glad that he saw her. It's something about music - all sorts, really, but he thinks she might have looked at him when she said calliope - and even though it sounds exactly like bullshit, there's still something in the tone of her voice that makes him want to research, to do enough follow up on this Charlene ("Call me Lulu!" Jon does not.) Billings.

And that's before she smiles.

See, Tim has the nagging feeling that whoever Charlene Billings really is, that's definitely not her real name. For once, Jon isn't dense as all hell and seems to agree.

"Best of luck to you, Miss Billings," he says as she leaves, sounds as though he means anything but, and that's when it happens.

So quickly that, had he not been looking, he might have missed it entirely, Tim watches the corner of Charlene Billings's mouth lift and twist itself into the same half-smile that Sasha had always worn when she was trying to suppress laughter.

* * *

Here's the thing: Tim had known Sasha really, really well. Still does, in fact; if someone were to ask him which toppings she had gotten on her ice cream, he could still rattle them off in the same order she had. It's not that you get to know someone well after working with them for so long (though god knows he's learned far too much about Martin's flossing habits - good, just weird), but that he'd wanted to learn everything that she had been willing to share with him.

To anyone with a working brain (and here he would reluctantly include Jon and happily exclude Elias), Sasha had been the kind of person you wanted to know not because there was something she could do for you, though there was plenty of that, but because she exuded an easy charm and competence that made it impossible not to like her.

With Sasha, Tim had felt safe for the first time since Joseph Grimaldi's grinning face had removed the skin of his brother from a beautiful monster like a tablecloth.

So when he says it's the same smile, that's no exaggeration, Ten hours later and he's still ruminating on it, trying to figure out if this is it, if he's finally gone batshit and is in the process of deluding himself into believing that this woman who looks nothing like Sasha (a little taller, a little thinner, lighter skin, hair a color that she never would have picked for herself in a million years) is... what? A reincarnation?

No, things like that don't happen. Not to anyone, but especially not to _Tim,_ who is marked by a gross fucking eyeball that wants to jack off to his misery.

He worries, sometimes, that he really will forget what Sasha James had looked like, that he'll lose the Polaroid that Martin had given him, found in the mess of his desk drawer. He worries that he'll lose the tape with her voice on it (also stolen by Martin, and really, how had he ever thought of that man as in need of protection?) and let her drift away entirely.

The memories came to him sometimes, though, of her as she used to be. He tries not to think about how that probably means he's using The Eye to See her, but at this point, what's one more drop in a ceaselessly watching fear entity's wank bucket?

All that being said, he _knows_ that the expression Charlene Billings had made was not just similar, not even the close parallel of a family member's.

Somehow, _Sasha_ had made that expression, pulling facial muscles underneath a different skin. He wishes he didn't have the imagination to conjure up a hundred other possible scenarios.

In the morning, he's going to march into Jonathan fucking Sims's office and force the bastard to listen, perverted double boss be damned.

Tonight, though, he's going to watch old home movies and pretend that he can somehow get her back.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on twitter @kingblaiddyd!


End file.
